Philosophy 1: Do It Yourself (D.I.Y.) “Today we live in a world where doing-it-yourself doesn’t seem that radical at all. We accept that anyone is capable of becoming a change agent.”

And that includes students. Students no longer need to wait for you to teach them what you think they need to know. Students can go create their own Personal Learning Networks of teachers, mentors, friends, and anyone anywhere who has something they want to learn. Choice, freedom, and change. Students crave it and with technology, they can get it. Our outdated notions of teaching students locked in a classroom will have to give way to the Open Model of Education that is focused on the student and their learning because, “Limitations suck.”

“It seems that ownership of the means of production—the backbone of capitalism—is falling into the hands of the masses. But soon the notion of ‘owning’ the means of production may itself be redundant.”

In other words, nobody owns teaching anymore. Nobody controls what students want or need to know. It’s now about the learning and that means nobody owns our students minds or bodies. They get to learn from anyone, anywhere, at anytime, and for their own reasons, not yours.

“DIY is about becoming more independent. The more independent we become as a society, the more industries become decentralized. Indeed we may reach a point where there is no ‘industry’ left at all, in its place many vibrant local markets producing value, but not controlled exclusively by big players.”

Big Education has a problem. We have Big Oil, Big Insurance, Big Drug Companies, Big Tobacco, etc. I say we have Big Education, and it’s is going to have to adapt to D.I.Y. learning.

Philosophy 2:Resist Authority“Punk resisted authority and saw anarchy as a path to a brighter future. Punk capitalists are resisting authority, too--by leveraging new D.I.Y. technologies and the power of individuals connecting and working together as equals. This twin engine of the new economy is creating new ways all of us can live and work, leaving old system for dust. Technology + Democracy = Punk Capitalism”

Students are going to pirate their own education. You figured out the best way to teach subjects, now they are going to use your “best practices” for themselves. Teachers and professors have developed research based teaching methods for ensuring the best learning. Now, students and educational entrepreneurs are going to pirate those ideas and do it themselves. The Open Model of Education leverages technology and best practices to give learning and teaching anyone. They are not stuck in your system, following your rules they are following pirate rules, which means there are no rules.

Philosophy 3:Combine Altruism with Self-Interest“Punk had high ideals—it looked aggressive and scary, but through its angry critique of society and subversion of it, it sought to change the world for the better.”

The Open Model of Education can look at little scary to someone who committed to Big Education. It takes their power away by changing the focus from teaching to learning. It allows students and other to pirate the best educational practices and methods and use them to meet their needs and interests.

But this is going to make education better. A focus on every student learning in manner and style that is uniquely best for that student. What could be altruistic than giving a person the best education possible? What could be more beneficial than giving every person a chance to succeed to their highest potential? As a country, is not in our best interests to ensure that our students receive the best learning possible? It is in our self-interest that we change. It is in our self-interest that Big Education be pirated by its students.

“Pirates create positive social and economic changes, and understanding piracy today is more important than ever…”

2 Comments

As if this were something new. In 1971, three years before the Ramones formed, Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich proposed an educational very much like the system you suggest here. So why hasn't it come about in the past almost 40 years? Pretty much for the same reason we no longer listen to punk very much; people think they like something different right up until the moment they feel threatened by it. I'm not talking about teachers or the education bureaucracy, I'm talking about the consumers, the parents of the kids who keep enrolling in traditional schools. Even most of the homeschoolers, who have tremendous freedom to do something different, model their instruction on the way it is done in the public schools.

People say they want change because it is easy to say, but when it comes to actually doing something to make it happen they run the other way.